Scottish Music Centre

All I knew was the choir I’m in had a gig in the City Halls. I thought, eh. ok is that not rather large. Well, it was part of the Scottish Refugee Week and one of our choir members was working at the event and invited The Arches Community Choir to come along to do a wee performance.
When I arrived I found out it was the Scottish Music Centre. I’ve probably walked by here many times and not really paid attention to be honest. It’s a lovely modern area just on your left when you enter the main entrance of the City Halls. So technically it was the City Halls but SMC is situated within the City Halls. Ahhh. makes sense now?!
I was kind of pleased as I was a bit worried we were performing to a huge audience. The Scottish Refugee Week event was called the Human «Music» Library which featured people as human books. So you could spend time talking to them about their music from around the world.
They had set up stations around the centre allowing you to sit down with the musician and they would explain their type of music and how they play or sing.
It was set out like a big livingroom and they had put on nibbles and drinks. Later on after the chats they set up a space allowing the musicians to perform. It was a great variety of music and made not a bad wee venue. Although when it came to us performing we did take up quite a lot of room, so we squished in and performed some of our classics, which went down well.
It was a great day and I would go back to SMC for another event or just to have a wee nosey.

Didn’t know this place existed until very recently.
Came with a friend who thought I would love it, and she was right.
It’s essentially an archive of Scottish music, with exhaustive free databases of Scottish music and alot of other things ongoing in here that I have yet to conceptualise.
The staff are super keen and enthusiastic and the place is much more lively than you might think with up to date technology.
A funky wee place.

Having used the SMC as a resource to look back over past events in the city, I cannot really judge how well they help people who can actually play instruments: nevertheless, they are great for researchers, and have all sorts of interesting material, from scores through to back issues of magazines and, most importantly, are more than happy to help out a lost soul who wants to look back over Glasgow’s musical past.
Next door to the Fruitmarket, they are at the heart of the Merchant City regeneration programme, and are another healthy example of the Scottish willingness to support their artists.

The Scottish Music Centre has been around for 40 years now, helping Scottish musicians with musical resources, training, and other such things.
The website, says:
«SMC stands at the cutting edge of promoting Scotland’s vibrant musical culture, tending its history and providing resources for the present and coming generations of Caledonian musicians… the SMC is much more than just a library. It is a key player in developing Scottish talent both locally and internationally. Training sessions and outreach programmes, Scotland’s best online news and jobs service for the music industry, and a whole range of essential services, from publicity to website design, printing, digital scoring and recording.»
How excellent is that?! It has helped a number of my friends with promotions and music recordings in the past couple of years — I think that if you’re a Glasgow musician, you should head down and have a chat with these guys. They most definitely know what they’re doing!